PARMON
A Monitoring System for Clusters of Computers
Introduction
Workstation/PC clusters have become a cost-effective solution for high
performance computing. C-DAC’s PARAM 10000 (OpenFrame) is a large cluster
of high performance workstations interconnected through low-latency, high
bandwidth communication networks. The management and control of such a
huge system is a tedious and challenging task since workstations/PCs are
typically designed to work as a standalone system, rather than a part of
clusters. We have designed and developed a tool called PARMON that allows
effective monitoring and control of large clusters. It allows the monitoring
of critical system resource activities and their utilization at three different
levels: entire system, node, and component level. It also supports the
monitoring of multiple instances of the same component, for instance,
multiple processors in SMP type cluster nodes.
PARMON is a portable, flexible, interactive, scalable, location-transparent,
and comprehensive environment based on client-server technology.
The major components of PARMON are parmon-server—system resource activities
and utilization information provider and parmon-client—GUI based client
responsible for interacting with parmon-server and users for data gathering
in real-time and presenting information graphically for visualization.
The client is developed as a Java application and the server is developed
as a multithreaded server using C and POSIX/Solaris threads and Java does
not support interfaces to access system internals. PARMON is regularly
used to monitor C-DAC PARAM 10000 supercomputer, a cluster of 48 Ultra-4
workstations powered by Solaris operating system.
The recent popularity of Beowulf-class clusters (dedicated Linux clusters)
in terms of price-performance ratio has motivated us to port PARMON to
Linux (accomplished by porting system dependent portions of parmon-server).
This enables management/monitoring of both Solaris and Linux-based clusters
(federated clusters) through a single user interface.
Developed At
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing,
Bangalore, India.
Project Team
Publications
- PARMON Product
Brochure, Centre for Development of Advance Computing, (c) C-DAC, Bangalore, India, 1998.
(local copy here.)
- PARMON User Manual, Centre for Development of Advance Computing, (c) C-DAC, Bangalore, India, 1998.
-
PARMON:
A Comprehensive Cluster Monitoring System, Proceedings of the International
Conference on High Performance Computing on Hewlett-Packard Systems (HiPer'98), ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 1998.
-
PARMON:
A Portable and Scalable Monitoring System for Clusters, International Journal on Software: Practice & Experience (SPE), John Wiley & Sons,
Inc, USA, June 2000.
Presentations
- PARMON Work has been presented at C-DAC Pune, ADCOMP'97, Madras; AUUG'98, Sydney; PDCN'98, Brisbane. See Slides in PPT format.
Maintained and Marketed By
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing,
India.
For related products information from C-DAC, browse HPCC
Software. Also for PARMON marketing and sales information, please contact C-DAC directly.
Related Project (for Windows Clusters)
Cluster Environment
Observer (CEO): A Tool for Adminstering Windows Clusters